Editing Frances Burney (section)

==Journal-diaries and ''Caroline Evelyn''==
The first entry in Frances Burney's journal was dated 27 March 1768 and addressed to "Nobody". The journal itself was to extend over 72 years. Burney kept the journal-diary as a form of correspondence with family and friends, recounting life events and her observations of them. The diary contains a record of her extensive reading in her father's library, as well as the visits and behaviour of notable people who visited their home. Burney and her sister Susanna were particularly close, and Burney continued to send journal-letters to Susanna throughout her adult life.

Burney was 15 when her father married Elizabeth Allen in 1767. Her diary entries suggest that she had begun to feel pressure to abandon her writing as something "unladylike" that "might vex Mrs. Allen."<ref>Doody 36.</ref> Feeling that she had transgressed, the same year she burnt her first manuscript, ''The History of Caroline Evelyn'', which she had written in secret. Despite this repudiation, Frances recorded in her diary an account of the emotions that led up to that dramatic act. She eventually used it as a foundation for her first novel, ''Evelina'', which follows the life of the fictional Caroline Evelyn's daughter.

In keeping with Burney's sense of [[Etiquette|propriety]], she heavily edited earlier parts of her diaries in later life, destroying much of the material. Editors Lars Troide and [[Joyce Hemlow]] recovered some of this obscured material while researching their editions of Burney's journals and letters in the late twentieth century.